TIF Says Triple Crown Pre-Race Inspection Reports Should Be Public

While veterinary scrutiny has increased, communication has not, as U.S. racing has fallen short in the transparency space both this year and many years in the past, the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation (TIF) said on their website on Wednesday.

According to the TIF report, there were more than 33,000 races for Thoroughbreds in the U.S. in 2022, but if you asked the public to name just three of them, chances are they would be the GI Kentucky Derby, the GI Preakness S. and the GI Belmont S.

The report takes the position that the Triple Crown races, despite massive coverage across multiple platforms, still relies on potential hearsay and not regulatory bodies with the specific expertise to offer “formal updates regarding the health and soundness of horses entered in the races which attract the most public attention.”

TIF piece goes on to argue that, “Actual details which media, horseplayers and fans alike can consume, eliminates speculation and repetitive inaccuracies that take hold, particularly across social media, while proving to a wider audience what many inside the sport already know–veterinary scrutiny has never been stronger!”

As with Forte's (Violence) leg injury or Mage's (Good Magic) cut above his eye leading up to this year's Kentucky Derby, the majority of the time the public hears from a veterinarian only after an injury has occurred. Though safety and welfare initiatives are welcomed without question, TIF advocates regulators going further to communicate with the public about the horses and their fitness to compete in the most important U.S. races.

“Communication” will occur regardless–first as whispers amongst some insiders, then tweets and texts that spiral endlessly–all while, as TIF wrote, “the truth is likely sitting in regulatory silence.”

As for international examples, they abound TIF offers. The protocols surrounding the G1 Melbourne Cup in Australia and the pre-race screening administered by the likes of the Hong Kong Jockey Club are models that the U.S. can emulate, which will lead to progress and transparency for the sport.

Click here to access the full report on the TIF website.

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TIF Hosting Derby Prop Contest For Racing Charities

With 20 questions and a tiebreaker facing contest participants, entries are now open for the 2023 Thoroughbred Idea Foundation Derby Prop Contest, the organization said in a release Wednesday.

The entry portal closes at 11:00 a.m. E.T. this Saturday, May 6. Players should keep track of their answers as you will not be able to revisit the survey portal once you submit your entry. Should a horse named directly in a prop be scratched, all answers to that prop may be counted as correct.

Winners will be notified by email late on Saturday evening to identify how to direct charitable donations. The top finishers will get to direct $20,000 in donations to four racing charities, which are: Backside Learning Center at Churchill Downs, New Vocations, Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund and Second Stride. Click here, for more information.

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From the TIF: Fixed-Odds in NY Could be Next

Fixed-odds betting options on horse racing could come to New York residents if a new bill introduced by Senator Joseph Addabbo, Chairman of the state Senate's Racing, gaming and Wagering Committee, is passed, according to a story from the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation.

Senate Bill 2343 is similar to a measure introduced a year ago, also by Sen. Addabbo, but which was never advanced for a vote, TIF reports.

“There should be no doubt amongst racing stakeholders that our existing pari-mutuel offerings are not enough in today's competitive market,” said Thoroughbred Idea Foundation executive director Patrick Cummings.

“Fixed odds bets for racing won't replace pari-mutuel wagering, but rather complement our existing offerings, and meet modern customers with a modern product that they currently enjoy with widespread sports betting options.

“After adjusting for inflation, we estimate that mainstream handle on U.S. racing has declined by roughly two-thirds over the last 20 years. The pari-mutuel status quo with high takeout rates and the constant promotion of low-churn exotic bets have depleted our mass market customers. Fixed odds betting offers racing a chance to recapture those that drifted from the sport while introducing our product to new audiences.”

In a statement from the New York Racing Association published earlier this week by DRF, spokesman Patrick McKenna indicated the measure had NYRA's support and “presents an enormous opportunity for horse racing to share in the rapid growth and unrivaled success of New York State's mobile sports wagering marketplace.”

“Allowing mobile sports wagering platforms to offer premium horse racing content would generate untapped gaming revenue for New York State, attract new fans to horse racing, and deepen the sport's overall economic impact.”

TIF supported the expansion into complementary fixed odds options in its 2019 white paper, which can be reviewed here.

Last year was the first full season with fixed odds offerings for on-track customers at Monmouth Park in New Jersey, where the offering is managed by Australian firm BetMakers. Wider distribution to New Jersey customers, including ADW betting via fixed odds on Monmouth races and simulcasted races, is expected in 2023, the TIF reported.

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Sixty Incidents of Pool Manipulation. The Industry Shrugs

A month ago, the Thoroughbred Idea Foundation (TIF), a think tank that uses independent research to try and drive changes in the sport, brought to light an example of what it said was brazen quinella pari-mutuel pool manipulation at Gulfstream Park. The scheme was apparently designed to jack up the odds the manipulator would receive on winning bets placed with non-pari-mutuel offshore bookies that paid on-track prices.

On Wednesday, Pat Cummings, the TIF's executive director, told an audience at the Global Symposium on Racing hosted by the University of Arizona Race Track Industry Program in Tucson that this incident was one of more than 60 purported pool manipulations he has documented at North American racetracks since the spring.

“The reason we wrote about that particular incident was because it was easily the biggest of more than five dozen incidents that we've tracked in the last six or seven months affecting, really, a significant number of racetracks, most of whom don't seem to know any of this is going on,” Cummings said.

And in the cases where regulators and racetrack operators do acknowledge that pool manipulation exists, Cummings said, they often believe the practice is victimless, without harm to the sport, or beyond their power to change.

All of those ideas are incorrect, Cummings said in a panel discussion titled “Illegal Betting's Threat to the Racing Industry.”

“I've approached regulators across America with this,” Cummings said. “And they say, 'Well, it is handle, right?' I mean, the tracks want this money…”

Cummings trailed off midsentence, giving the impression that industry bigwigs often shrug when faced with evidence of pool manipulation (Gulfstream, however, did discontinue quinella wagering days after becoming aware of the Nov. 11 pool irregularities).     A recent report titled “The State of Illegal Betting,” compiled earlier this year by the Asian Racing Federation, exposed the proliferation of unlicensed and unregulated online horse racing and sports wagering companies. The report found the global demand for online wagering is increasing faster than industry's ability to react. The suspicious betting patterns detected by the TIF in American pools may have a connection to non-pari-mutuel bookmaking.

Wednesday's panel, which also included global perspectives from Matt Fowler, the London-based director of integrity for the International Betting Integrity Association, and Martin Purbrick, the chairman of the Asian Racing Federation's Council on Anti-Illegal Betting and Related Financial Crime, outlined some major threats and discussed what actions could be taken going forward.

But it was the presentation by Cummings–who isn't even a regulator or investigator, but is more akin to an ombudsman for U.S. wagering–that hit closest to home for most stateside racing stakeholders.

Cummings said the first fundamental step is to recognize that pool manipulation is never going to be eradicated entirely. It's not even explicitly illegal. A good chunk of it, he said, occurs with the aid of the “vast” gray-market global bet-booking business whose handle is “far in excess of the legal market, and it has infiltrated American racing. There is absolutely no question.”

Cummings gave an overview of how a manipulator might work, using show pools as an example. (If you want to read a more in-depth TIF writeup on the process, click here.)

A manipulator might bet $2,000 to show on a horse or horses who look certain to finish in the money at a track where the fields are uncompetitive and/or short and the show pools are miniscule. But instead of betting that money in the pools, he instead spreads it across a number of different offshore bookmakers in smaller increments. These are bets he intends to win, and it's important to note that the offshore outlets don't often “lay off” this money into the mutuel pools.

In the same race, the manipulator then bets, say, $4,500 into the show pool on one of the longest shots on the board, and this money does go through the mutuels, making a horse who is unlikely to hit the board based on past performances the overwhelming favorite in that pool. This bet he intends to lose–it's a business cost whose sole function is to abnormally drive up the show prices on the more likely horse(s) to hit the board that he backed with the offshore bookies who pay the on-track prices.

If the race unfolds as the manipulator envisioned it will, the hapless heavy show favorite runs out of the money, while the more talented horse(s) he backed via bookmakers cruises home in the top three, triggering something like a $21.00 show payoff.

“So they sacrificed $4,500 to win maybe $21,000,” Cummings said. “The manipulator is spreading his or her risk, likely across multiple accounts, because the offshore operator may not pay them. That's just part of the risk.”

Cummings continued: “I don't see a lot of [bettors] talking about this or noticing it. And the reason is, if you bet an even-money shot to show thinking you were going to get $2.20, and [instead] got $21.20, who's complaining?”

That's an obvious example that should stand out, Cummings said. But this pattern occurs with more subtlety using smaller dollar amounts, he explained, like when a manipulator might be content not to make a single big score, but instead routinely inflate 1-to-5 shots in the show pool so they pay off like a 4-5 shot would.

And occasionally, the horse who was supposed to be a dud wins or hits the board, Cummings said. That's when bettors do speak up and complain about the pools not being on the level, because the big long shot they legitimately bet in the mutuels returns a vastly underlaid show payout.

That can lead to image and integrity problems, Cummings said.

“You do not want a bad name associated with your product. And every time someone manipulates your pool, if it's noticed, it's bad for your product,” Cummings said.

Beyond creating bad perceptions, Cummings said, rampant pool rigging could also encourage manipulators to get a bit bolder with their actions, perhaps by spending a bit extra to bribe participants to ensure desired outcomes in races.

“If someone's willing to bet $4,500 to show in a race where the winning jockey is earning $900, what's an extra $500 to make sure they don't run in the money?” Cummings said. “Or an extra $500 to the trainer to tell the jockey to maybe be a little slow out of the gate today.”

Cummings stressed that to his knowledge, there is no current evidence that pool manipulators are reaching out to arrange fixed races.

“That's a good thing–for now. But it's out there. And it happens. And there is no reason that others might not try to copy this,” Cummings said.

Cummings explained that he's a proponent of the “best defense is a good offense” strategy to try to keep pool manipulation at bay. The industry can do this, he said, by recognizing that our pari-mutuel system is ripe for being controlled in the manner he described, and by increasing stewards' awareness and oversight so there is a better focus on pool-watching.

A fixed-odds system might be a better long-term solution. But that style of betting is not completely immune from manipulation, either, Cummings said.

Reinventing our wagering menus could be an option, Cummings said, with an eye on pruning off the low-volume pools.

“Should a track that has offered win, place and show betting for the last 60 years continue to do so when the place and the show pools only average $1,200?” he postulated.

In that case, maybe the solution is to get rid of the place and/or show pools.

The proliferation of rolling horizontal wagers on practically every race card on the continent is also a hazard waiting to happen, Cummings said, because those bets, too, draw very little mutuels action and have low base-bet increments.

“We have to rethink the way we're doing this, because every small pool is a way to manipulate the outcome, to corrupt a participant, to help exact these sorts of outcomes,” Cummings said.

Cummings said he has spoken with various groups of officials and regulators over the past year about the problem of pool manipulation.

Their reactions?

“Interested, but [there was] very little they thought they could do about this,” Cummings said.

“This falls back on track operators. It falls back on horsemen's groups,” Cummings said, pointing out that the idea of looking the other way when pool manipulation occurs is not justifiable simply because it increases handle and thus fuels purses.

“If you don't recognize it, [or] if you bury your head and say, 'I don't want to hear about it–not interested,' it's going to keep happening,” Cummings said.

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